"Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Hollow of the Three Hills" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawthorne Nathaniel)

leaves; and when the lady lifted her eyes, there was she kneeling in
the hollow between three hills.

" A weary and lonesome time yonder old couple have of it," remarked
the old woman, smiling in the lady's face.

"And did you also hear them?" exclaimed she, a sense of intolerable
humiliation triumphing over her agony and fear.

"Yea; and we have yet more to hear," replied the old woman.
"Wherefore, cover thy face quickly."

Again the withered hag poured forth the monotonous words of a
prayer that was not meant to be acceptable in heaven; and soon, in the
pauses of her breath, strange murmurings began to thicken, gradually
increasing so as to drown and overpower the charm by which they
grew. Shrieks pierced through the obscurity of sound, and were
succeeded by the singing of sweet female voices, which, in their turn,
gave way to a wild roar of laughter, broken suddenly by groanings
and sobs, forming altogether a ghastly confusion of terror and
mourning and mirth. Chains were rattling, fierce and stern voices
uttered threats, and the scourge resounded at their command. All these
noises deepened and became substantial to the listener's ear, till she
could distinguish every soft and dreamy accent of the love songs
that died causelessly into funeral hymns. She shuddered at the
unprovoked wrath which blazed up like the spontaneous kindling of
flame, and she grew faint at the fearful merriment raging miserably
around her. In the midst of this wild scene, where unbound passions
jostled each other in a drunken career, there was one solemn voice
of a man, and a manly and melodious voice it might once have been.
He went to and fro continually, and his feet sounded upon the floor.
In each member of that frenzied company, whose own burning thoughts
had become their exclusive world, he sought an auditor for the story
of his individual wrong, and interpreted their laughter and tears as
his reward of scorn or pity. He spoke of woman's perfidy, of a wife
who had broken her holiest vows, of a home and heart made desolate.
Even as he went on, the shout, the laugh, the shriek, the sob, rose up
in unison, till they changed into the hollow, fitful, and uneven sound
of the wind, as it fought among the pine-trees on those three lonely
hills. The lady looked up, and there was the withered woman smiling in
her face.

"Couldst thou have thought there were such merry times in a
mad-house?" inquired the latter.

"True, true," said the lady to herself; "there is mirth within
its walls, but misery, misery without."

"Wouldst thou hear more?" demanded the old woman.